


in the night (i hear them talk)

by hyrax



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:41:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2392082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyrax/pseuds/hyrax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>the coldest story ever told.</i>
</p><p>Natasha Romanoff gives someone a ride to the airport, kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the night (i hear them talk)

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fic. it is about natasha giving someone a ride to the airport, eventually. steve rogers isn't in this a lot, even though it's kind of all about his steve-ness. obviously, emma frost here probably doesn't look anything like january jones, all things considered. this is non-linear and i've never really tried to do that before, so i think i failed horribly, but it feels pretty good to have finished something.

In the aftermath, Natasha drives. Maybe this is symptomatic of a larger problem; something that grows into something too-literal, like a habit, makes her want to take the time because the shortage of it belongs to another creature with another name. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Natasha drives. Her hair is red; her credit card reads N. ROMANOFF; her iPhone has a cartoonish hippo on the back because she thought it would be funny.

There is nobody in the seat next to her. She drives a rental, a blue Jeep that nobody would look twice at, and checks her phone. There are thirty-three hours left.

Plenty of time.

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

Natalia Alianovna Romanova testifies in front of congress. She doesn’t do it for Steve, though to say that she doesn’t think of him isn’t true or very realistic. She thinks of him,  and she thinks of Phil Coulson, and she thinks of Victoria Hand. All good people. All people she followed, once. Maybe there is pain in thinking about how unsettled things have become, that good has never meant right but she had thought, now, in her years, that the Black Widow would be strong enough to know the difference. Nick had, barely; Carter hadn’t. Hill hadn’t. It doesn’t make her feel better, exactly, because the dividing line between had and hadn’t isn’t what’s bothering her.

Nick could have told her. He never did. It makes sense, that if anyone were to be HYDRA, it would be somebody with a history like the Black Widow.

Even more so these days. Her secrets are out on the internet, as are everyone else’s. She testifies in front of congress and tells them that, every time, there will be people who choose to do the right thing. That prisons don’t matter, that heroes don’t need containment. That’s what makes them heroes.

It’s funny, in a way. She was never in the business of giving guarantees before she met Steve Rogers.

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

“Thanks.” It’s the first word he’s said to her in fourteen hours of driving. Natasha blinks into the rear view mirror as she turns into a lane. He clears his throat beside her, almost awkward, like he isn't sure how to follow that up.

“You’re speaking English,” she says instead, as if this slow unraveling is a stranger to her.

“Yeah,” the Soldier says. “I guess I am.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything. She keeps driving, sticks to the speed limit. The Winter Soldier is seated next to her and his hair is too long, unkempt. He’s growing stubble. He doesn’t sleep, never closes his eyes. Natasha is sure that he’s lost muscle mass.  She knows that he is thinking of Steve Rogers. That’s another funny thing. All roads lead.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

She tries to make it a joke, as if he were Clint. The fragments she remembers, they’re like the knots along a guide rope, all an equal distance apart but different in their individual shape. From the fragments she remembers, he’d get along with Clint.

The Soldier shrugs. (He’s affording her a lot; she notes that, too.)

“Not much to tell.”

Natasha hums. “You know I don’t believe you.”

He makes a noise in response that sounds like a bark. Rough, low, hoarse with disuse. Some kind of sound that mixes amusement and agreement in a thoroughly alien way.

“Six months is a long time to have me on Google alerts.”

Natasha smiles.

“I didn’t need the internet.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

They stop to eat at a diner. It has red and white checkered tabletops, laminated and glossy. There are cracks on the surface that have collected crumbs from whoever was sitting here previously, whatever they ate. Natasha orders a slice of cherry pie and skewers a scarlet and bleeding piece of fruit with her fork, chews it with a half-caution because sometimes they’re not fully pitted. The TV is on. Full-contact sport. She doesn’t give enough of a fuck about football to follow. Reality TV is a much more mundane and useful interest to cultivate. There is no worker with a deskjob under the age of 50 who does not follow something.

The Soldier stares down at his BLT. She pretends she’s not watching him from her peripheral and deconstructs her slice of pie instead. Fruit first, the whole cherries, then pastry with syrup, then crust. He starts staring at her fork instead.

“What,” she says, as if exasperated, though she isn’t. He chose to engage. That’s progress.

“I remember,” he says. His eyes stop focusing; his brows draw together. “You were younger.”

This conversation comes sooner than she anticipated. Natasha carefully swallows her mouthful of pie.

“Yeah,” she tells him. “But I don’t remember that.”

He looks alarmed. She continues.

“I know what I saw, and I know what I saw was true. That I have it. But I can’t call that a memory. Information, I guess.”

He nods, just the once. They understand what information is. They also know that memory is the thing that you make, that you have to remember making, otherwise--

“You can stop making a show of it,” he tells her flatly. Natasha looks up from her pie and lifts her brows.

“I know where you’re taking me,” he says.

Natasha stops chewing. She puts her fork down and wets her lips, stained a bitter red from the fruit, and she reaches for half of his BLT.

“Are you going to eat that?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Emma is blonde, porcelain, all diamond-like poise. Natasha has eighteen hours left before she has to go pick up the Winter Soldier. Jumbled encryption, specific pre-War cypher to make sense of the coordinates and date. It’s taken up more than eighteen hours of her time, checking and double-checking, making arrangements, slipping back into her own skin. Right now, she’s taking a break; lounging on hotel bedsheets, eating strawberries, letting the fabric smooth across her thighs. Her mouth tastes like Emma and sex and fruit, and it’s good. She lets herself enjoy that for a moment, runs her tongue across her teeth.

Voices grow quiet; the door finally closes. Emma rolls her eyes and throws her purse onto the dresser. Bellboys always seem to know about the Hellfire Club, want to know more without explicitly asking but all they really do is frustrate, take away her precious time.

Emma Frost slips into bed. Wordlessly, Natasha offers her a strawberry.

Emma snorts.

“Hand-feeding? Next you’ll be asking me to kneel.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

And, later.

Emma’s hands are warm when they touch Natasha’s face. People who buy into the coldness of things without knowing that that is not the absence of warmth bore her. Emma might not understand, but she is, almost, a friend.

“Natalia,” she says, sharply. “Relax. Let me in.”

Natasha tries to. It’s like opening a door inside her mind. If she can open it, just enough, then she might be able to remember. 1984 seems like the right year, doesn’t it, but now Natasha’s in the business of guarantees. She needs, wants, to know.

“Well,” Emma says. Her mouth doesn’t open and the words skim across Natasha’s thoughts like a pebble over a pond. “Would you look at that.”

Inside her head, Natasha hears the sound of a door unlocking itself.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

It’s four AM. Natasha’s phone vibrates dully against the sidetable. She squints at the screen:

WHERE ARE YOU?

And,

NAT?

And,

STEVE IS FREAKING OUT.

Natasha sighs and gets out of bed. She dresses carefully, then knocks lightly on the bathroom door. The Soldier is in the bathtub. He doesn’t seem to trust beds, the pillows, the semblances of anything that constitute a bed, not even a motel.

“We need to start moving again,” she says.

The Soldier says nothing.

Natasha walks over to the sink and reaches for her toothbrush. Brushes her teeth, mint foam on the inside of her cheeks as she stares at the Soldier’s hunched over form in the mirror. She spits, rinses her mouth, and places the toothbrush back into the dinky little holder.

“I’m not taking you to Steve,” she says.

The Soldier looks up.

She almost wants to roll her eyes. “Let’s go.”

So they go.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

“Where are we?”

Natasha smiles at him. James Barnes, the picture that fits, is something that looks familiar. He is blurry, out of focus, but her own perception of him isn’t important. It’s that he’s open to this, that he’s experiencing it.

“I took you to see a friend,” she tells him. It’s cold enough to be the Arctic. Is it? Yes, it’s the Arctic; Natasha can see her breath come out in cold pillows of air in front of her face. “Her name is Emma.”

James blinks.

“You don’t think it’s dramatic, for it to be snowing inside your head?” Natasha asks.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

It’s been fifty six hours. Natasha is driving, still, and she answers lazily, accepts the call and sandwiches it between her ear and shoulder.

“Romanoff.”

“Natasha--” He sounds so relieved. Natasha understands, though. Love is love.

“Hold on,” she says. “I’m driving. I’ll hand you over.”

The noise of confusion is audible, tinny over the line. Metal fingers brush gently against the shell of her ear, plucks the smartphone away.

“Hey, Steve.”

There’s a pause. Bucky laughs, loud, freer, and looks sidelong at Natasha.

“To be honest,” he says. “I thought she was going to kill me.”

A beat. Listening.

“Yeah,” he says eventually. “Yeah, Steve. We’ll be there soon.”

 


End file.
